In an interview on The Howard Stern Show, Brendan Fraser, who’s on a Hollywood comeback with the well-received film The Whale, shared his feelings about being nominated for the Golden Globes, which he boycotted, and whether people should support his boycott.
“I don’t need everyone to stand in solidarity with me,” the actor said, adding that this was his fight and “no one else’s.”
Fraser skipped the ceremony last 10 January after publicly disclosing that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association has not apologized to him in any meaningful way after he disclosed in 2018 that he was sexually assaulted by Philip Berk, then-president of the HFPA, during a luncheon in 2003.
Berk denied the accusations but eventually admitted in his 2014 memoir that he groped Fraser “in jest.”
If the HFPA is to make genuine amends, Fraser said it should start with issuing “an apology that made sense.” It would also involve sharing the investigation the group said it conducted into his complaint.
“I never saw the result of that report. They wouldn’t give it to me, they said, no, it’s ours. So whatever’s in it, they don’t want me to read it,” Fraser said. “Instead I was given a press release that said it was a joke.”
In 2022, Fraser told GQ that if he received a nomination at the HFPA for The Whale, he “will not participate” because of the “history” he had with the organization. Fraser did receive a Golden Globe Best Actor nomination but ultimately lost to Austin Butler (Elvis).
Fraser remains steadfast in his boycott of the press group behind the Golden Globes but acknowledges their step in the right direction.
“The good news is, they did something important in that broadcast and it changed my thinking about them: They put (Ukrainian President) Zelensky front and center,” the actor said. “They let him have the stage, and that’s a powerful statement and something I can get behind and support.”
The actor received universal acclaim for his performance in The Whale, the Darren Aronofsky psychological drama where he played a morbidly obese English professor trying to make amends with his teenage daughter. That career comeback has been rewarded with an Oscar nomination for Best Actor, and Fraser is seen as among the strongest frontrunners.